The First Live Patient-Focused Healthcare Blockchain Network Embleema launched today

Embleema, today emerged from stealth, to launch the public beta release of its patient-driven, HIPAA-compliant, personal health records Blockchain. Built on Ethereum, the leading smart-contract platform, and available today after one year of R&D, Embleema aims to solve the challenges associated with collection and safe sharing of Real World Evidence (RWE). Embleema restores precision and transparency in the healthcare and clinical trials industry, by allowing patients to consolidate, own and directly share their data with healthcare stakeholders, and receive compensation via cryptocurrency tokens for their involvement. Embleema’s leadership team brings together more than 100 years of industry experience in life sciences, healthcare data, wearable, digital health and Blockchain technology across the US, Europe and Asia-Pacific.

Today, drugs are primarily developed with data collected in controlled research environments, which fails to capture the efficacy of treatments in real-life setting.
32% of drugs approved by the FDA are affected by a postmarket safety event, prompting regulators to demand direct access to post-market raw data from life sciences2. Current methods of gathering data on adverse effects and efficacy are slow, and lack precision due to the absence of active patient involvement. This has worsened public health crises, like the Opioid epidemic, generating a vicious circle of distrust between between patients, life sciences, and regulators, and is delaying the availability of new drugs to patients.

“We focus on real data from real patients in the real world, something the health system has struggled with,” said Robert Chu, CEO and Founder of Embleema. ”Our mission is to turn the bottle upside down and put patients first, restoring their sovereignty over their data. Blockchain removes the need for third parties to broker the sharing of data, while providing the most accurate data possible for precision medicine. This is the best way to guarantee that individual patient data will be used to their benefit.” Chu left his role as Senior Vice President, Global Technology Solutions at IMS Health, a global leader in healthcare data, to found Embleema in June 2017.

Giving patients complete control over their healthcare data:Embleema’s health blockchain and decentralised app (DApp) enable patients to assemble the full picture of their health. It rewards them with crypto-tokens for securely storing medical records generated by their multiple healthcare providers through uploading f HL7 Continuity of Care Documents (CCDs) as well as data from heaklth trackers, starting with Fitbit trackers.

“With a decentralised public ledger, patients can truly be the stewards of their own data. Blockchain infrastructure provides three benefits — a ledger of where a patient’s records are to be found, smart contracts to determine who can access those records, and security keys to ensure only authorised parties access the data under the patients terms. It is not here to replace EMRs, but rather to create more balance within the system by giving patients control over their treatment and how their data is used.” – Dr. John D. Halamka, International Healthcare Innovation Professor at Harvard Medical School, Chief Information Officer at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Embleema advisory board member.

CysticFibrosis.com, Embleema Pilot Customer:“A major concern of patients with Cystic Fibrosis is that their health data could be sold without their knowledge or consent. Clinical trial participants don’t know where their data is going and it contains a huge amount of personal information beyond just their health records. Blockchain allows patients to share their data to aid in research – but on their terms and with full respect to their privacy. Our patient surveys have shown that 53% would agree to it if they had a proper way to give their consent to accelerating research. The Cystic Fibrosis community is a perfect model to pilot the Embleema technology.” says Jeanne Barnett, Founder of CysticFibrosis.com and patient advocate for the Cystic Fibrosis community.

Today, RWE studies suffer from three major deficiencies that lead to poor findings:
1: Reliance on low-resolution aggregated data sets sold by third party data brokers, rather than high-resolution individual patient data.
2: Inability to monitor the same patient over extended periods of time.
3: Incapacity to secure individual consent. To solve this, Embleema’s blockchain allows patients to consent to real-time data sharing with pharmaceutical companies and healthcare authorities, and be rewarded with cryptocurrency tokens. This will improve real-time detection of safety issues and assessment of efficacy down to the patient level..

? Upload Continuity of Care Documents (CCD) medical records into blockchain, with further support of other HL7 and FHIR interfaces in the future

? Upload of Fitbit information into blockchain, with further integration of other connected devices in the future

? Medical History stored securely on blockchain

? Authorization management for the sharing of the Medical History

? Audit-trail of parties accessing Personal Medical Records

? Compensation in tokens for uploading CCDs and Fitbit information, as well as referrals of new patients and providersPatients and healthcare professionals can be the first ones to use the Embleema health blockchain and PatientTruth Dapp by joining the community at https://www.embleema.com and be in the forefront of healthcare technology and be a pioneer for the new era of patient data stewardship. Healthcare organisations can also pilot the Embleema health blockchain network as part of our Consortium at https://www.embleema.com/#consortium.